His mission was clear. Protect the heiress. There was no room for hesitation or self-doubt.

He squeezed the trigger —

Blood splattered.

A large hailstone struck the boy on the back of his head, staining the powdery blanket.

From between the two mountains, a fleeting shaft of sunlight illuminated the agent’s body.

Bleeding on the ground, another hailstone struck dangerously close to his head, snapping him back into consciousness as it broke into icy fractals. Slowly, he turned his head towards the sky.

The tempest had filled up its arsenal — A thousand shimmering hailstones suspended in the sky, ready to rain at any moment.

He instinctively curled into a ball and covered his head, bracing for the onslaught.

With his eyes closed tight, the bombardment began.

His ears filled with a symphony of shattering ice. Nature’s vicious downpour left him clueless and disoriented. His limbs quivered with each brutal strike. The countless fractured shards shredded through his shirt, leaving a dry burn on his skin.

Frost bit into his flesh and ice seeped into veins.

Each strike was precise, ruthless, and left him gasping for air. But at the storm’s mercy, there was enough of an interval for him to catch his breath and take in the frozen air.

Time started to blur — He couldn’t tell how long it had been since the icy assault began — but he knew that it had to have been somewhere between thirty seconds and a thousand years.

“I can’t… die yet…” The agent declared to himself. He gathered enough willpower to open his eyes and crawl forward. “… I still have to…”

A scowl formed on his face. His veins began to radiate with a blue light, and his blood began to boil. Heat emanated from him, the thin frost enveloping his body melted away, letting him regain some sensation in his body.

Even though the frozen air stung, he filled up his chest with a deep inhale.

Bit by bit, he sluggishly inched his way back towards the rifle with his elbows. Even as the hail repeatedly struck his body. A sharp pain radiated with every half-step he took, but he continued onward regardless.

The last ray of sunlight led him to his rifle.

As soon as he grabbed on to the weapon’s strap, it slipped.

Barely hanging on, his heartbeat pounded against his throat.

Despite the cold, a drop of sweat a thousand times colder slid across his face.

Anxiety radiated through his whole body as he watched one of his bullets tumble off the cliff’s edge. Its golden glimmer disappearing into the depths, while his own rifle threatened to drag him down along with it.

Two-Zero-One instinctively pulled himself back up, the last bullet squeezed tightly between his fingers as he hurriedly placed his hand on solid ground.

From above, he was relentlessly pelted with hail. On his sides, the ground he desperately clung to was quickly crumbling underneath his chest, while the gun he was barely holding onto was dragging him down into into the darkness.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

There was barely anything for him to maintain his balance. The sound of the shifting snow whispering his slow slide towards the abyss.

Nature forced him to make a choice — either drop the gun, or fall with it.

Rather than continue staring into the abyss, he shifted his gaze back at the villa and thought about the heiress. A snarl formed on his face as he thought about her expression. The memory of someone else flashed in his mind. Another with the same look of fright.

There was nothing he could do against the blizzard’s vicious assault. The frozen storm wasn’t something he could fight, much less an enemy he could kill. It was just something in the way.

With grit teeth, he inhaled. The cold air invading inside him as he mustered all of his strength to pull the weapon back up.

He barely lifted it up to eye-level, and as he looked, the blood from his face blurred his vision, it was difficult to even see. Fortunately, in spite of the blizzard, the villa stood proud with next to no damage.

But all he needed to see was the orange dot in the darkness.

Though the blizzard insisted on blocking his view, the flickering sunlight granted him a few seconds of clarity. As soon as it came into full view, he saw his target walking towards the door with the heiress, while she reached out for her father, who was still bleeding on the ground.

His heartbeat rang in his ears.

From outside the window bars, the heiress’ desperate expression while reaching for someone else brought back an older memory.

In that moment, he caught a glimpse of someone else. Someone with golden hair and golden eyes, crying and reaching out to him from outside iron-bars.

Hanging halfway into the abyss, he loaded his last bullet.

With a clear mind, he breathed in. With a focused gaze, his eyes lit up with a strange azure light.

As he fired his last shot, the recoil slammed him back into solid ground.

Snow, wind resistance, trajectory — all of those lost meaning the moment the bullet left the muzzle, leaving a trail of faint blue sparks. It weaved through the falling snow and hail, slipping between the metal bars and crashing through the window, before taking a sharp, upwards turn straight towards the butler’s head.

In less than a second, the scent of gunpowder was immediately blown away by the blizzard’s last breath.

The sun had set.

With a deep groan, the boy quickly returned his gaze towards the villa. Though the hailstorm just passed by, the villa appeared relatively undamaged.

Through the scope of the rifle, he gazed at the silenced faces of those staring at the blood-stained wall. After a second’s notice, their mouths widely opened, and the screams followed. The panic had erupted for all of the guests, with the exception of the old man who reached for his daughter, and the young girl, who remained stunned on the floor.

As he embraced his daughter, her blank expression told it all.

But as the sniper watched, one more hailstone shot down from the sky and shattered his scope. As if to tell him that it was enough, that his job was done, and he should leave.

He picked up the rifle and all the scattered things that he could find, placed them inside the bag, and slung it over his shoulder, the weight of which nearly toppling him over.

There was a raspiness to his voice, “All I had to do was pull the trigger, so… why?”

Though his body was stiff and tenderized from the hailstorm, what ached the most was the storm forming in his chest.

“Why?” It was a simple, yet incomplete question. One without an easy answer. Or perhaps the answer was lost somewhere in the blizzard.

He shook his head, taking a deep exhale, before turning away from the edge. He began his slow descent back, dressed in a torn shirt covered in scrapes and bruises.

Ahead of him were the wintry black trees. Despite being ravaged by hailstorm, they still stood tall and proud.

The adrenaline had worn off. His weak knees burned with every step, and a sharp pain started to radiate throughout his body, throbbing, like his blood vessels were filled to burst.

Yet he noticed that the hail had stopped falling. He glanced upwards, and saw the aurora dancing in the sky. In the darkness of night, he didn’t realize that the blizzard had already passed by.

Static crackled in his ear and the voice followed, “— Agent Two-Zero-One, do you copy? Are you alright?”

“I’m… alive.” His voice cracked in pain, letting out a smile, “I’ve successfully completed mission. I’ll be—”

He dropped to the ground, bleeding from the head after a hailstone struck him. One final sucker punch. His body slid uncontrollably, leaving a trail through the frozen blanket, up until his back hit one of the black trees.

As the powdery pellets sapped away his strength, he tightened his fist and declared, “Not here…not yet… I still have to… get answers...”

Blood and bile poured from his head and mouth, the only other thing that his senses registered were the beating footsteps as he was buried by snow.

~